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Turbo Chong – Disrespectful

Disrespectful is about an accurate a title as you could wish for. Featuring members of Cthulu Youth, Unloved, Cease To Exist, and Enwige Schlangenkraft, this demo from Turbo Chong lives up to its name. This is low-fi, bloodied hardcore that doesn’t care what you think. It’s the sound of run-down council estates, violence for violence’s sake, the utter abandonment of right and wrong because nothing matters anyway, so do what you like and fuck the consequences.

Packing six tracks in to five minutes, Disrespectful isn’t meant for the long haul. The riffs are three-chord attacks on your self, the drums and cymbals the sound of barely controlled aggression, whilst the vocals recall nothing less than the late Johnny Morrow in their expression of pain and hate. There’s even a pretty rad guitar solo and leads during “Woll Smoth.” Likewise, the lyrics walk a fine line between parody and intimidation – there’s a sense of humour at play here, but it’s as black as black can be. “This is my playground/And I am the bully” insists vocalist Chaz on opener “And It’s T”, and it’s hard to disagree; whilst on closer “Big In The Game”, he baits with “You look like a mug who needs some love/So I gave you a kiss and I gave you a hug.” As chaotic and raw as it all is, there’s real passion and just the right level of control to the music, with the band knowing when to ease off just a touch to stop things falling apart.

Even so, it’s hardly a comfortable listen, which is exactly the point. Too much punk rock comes across as safe and sterile; Disrespectful is the polar opposite of such music, reminding the listener that punk and hardcore still has the capacity to sound genuinely dangerous and unsettling. Whether or not they mean it, I still wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of these guys. You can still hear the DNA of early punk in their sound, but it’s twisted and aggressively fucked up beyond anything that could have been expected in the 70’s. The earlier Johnny Morrow reference is apt in more ways than one – if Iron Monkey had been a hardcore band, they’d probably have sounded something like this. Fast, loud, and dangerous.

Disrespectful is available on a limited run of 23 cassettes from Yamabushi Recordings. It can also be downloaded and streamed from Bandcamp.